Human Rights in Ukraine. Information website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
http://khpg.org.index.php?id=1221299499Opinion: Legal classification of Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine and in Kuban as a crime against humanity and genocide
This
opinion is intended to demonstrate that Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine
and Kuban has elements of a crime against humanity in accordance with
the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court [hereafter RC ICC)
from 17 July 1998, and of genocide according to the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter the
Convention), adopted on 9 December 1948.
According to
Article 7 § 1 of the RC ICC «crime against humanity» means «any of the
following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic
attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the
attack:
(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other
form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h)
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on
political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as
defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized
as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act
referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of
the Court;
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
(j) The crime of apartheid;
(k)
Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great
suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.»
According Article 7 § 2 of the RC ICC
« For the purpose of paragraph 1:
...
(b) "Extermination" includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population;»
...»
The
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(hereafter the Convention) was adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the
U.N. General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and entered into force on 12
January 1951. It was ratified by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of
the USSR on 18 March, 1954.
According to Article 6 of the RC ICC and Article II of the Convention genocide means:
«any
of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c)
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
According to the Article III of the Convention the following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
Summary of the historical facts
For a correct assessment of Holodomor 1932-1933 we need to consider the historical events in Ukraine and Kuban and determine whether the policy of the Soviet regime was deliberate, whether it included an ethnic factor, and whether it was aimed at creating a mass-scale artificial famine resulting in the death of millions of people. The results of numerous studies of the Famine of 1932-1933 by Ukrainian, Russian and other foreign scholars can be summed up as follows.
After the
completion of total collectivization, a system was introduced under
which the kolkhoz had first to settle with the State according to a
quota issued from above (“The first commandment” in Joseph Stalin’s
words), and only later divide what remained among the workers for their
labour. However the quotas imposed were unrealistic and as a result the
kolkhozes were unable to compensate people for their labour. This
created a huge shortage of grain in the countryside. The kolkhoz workers
could only count on what they could gather on their garden plots –
potatoes, vegetables, etc, and went unwillingly to the kolkhoz with no
certainty that they would be paid. The grain shortage was created by
Stalin’s policy of “geeing up” (“podkhlyostyvanye” - Stalin’s term): the
initial quota which was already unattainable was unexpectedly increased
to mobilize people to achieve the first quota. That led to an even
greater shortage of grain and in the long run to famine.
When
people talk of the famine of 1932-1933, three different periods of
hunger need to be differentiated. Each of them, in addition to common
features, had their own specific causes, characteristics and
consequences which varied in their scale. The famine in the first half
of 1932 was caused by non-fulfilment of the grain requisition quota from
the 1931 harvest and the Kremlin policy with regard to rural areas due
to their not meeting the quotas. That famine was stopped by the return
from ports of a part of the grain intended for export, as well as
purchase of grain from abroad. In the third quarter of 1932, the famine
occurred again as the result of non-fulfilment of the requisition quotas
from the harvest of 1932. It must be stressed that the nature of the
famine in Ukraine up till November 1932 was the same as in other
agricultural regions of the USSR. Starvation during the famine of the first and second periods should be considered as a crime against humanity.
Famine
during the third period was caused by the confiscation of grain and any
food products which was carried out only in the rural areas of Ukraine
and in Kuban. This confiscation in November – December 1932 was partial,
but became total in January 1933. Moreover, due to measures organized
by the Party and Soviet leadership of the USSR and Ukrainian SSR people
were prohibited from leaving in search of food or receiving it from
outside. Left without any food, the peasants died of starvation. From
February 1933 this developed on a mass scale and from February to August
in Ukraine millions died of starvation in Ukraine, and hundreds of
thousands in Kuban. According to demographic statistics the direct
losses to Ukraine from famine of 1932-1933 were according to some data
3-3.8 million, while other figures suggest 4-4.8 million. Wide-scale
famine was combined with political repression against the intelligentsia
and national communists in 1933, as well as the stopping of the policy
of Ukrainization. Death from starvation during the famine of the
third period and from political repression should be viewed as a crime
against humanity and as the crime of genocide.
To establish
that crimes against humanity and of genocide were committed in Ukraine
and Kuban, one needs to consider the events of 1930-1933 in total. A
brief description of the historical facts is provided in Appendix.
Death from starvation during the period from January to October 1932
- a crime against humanity
A determining factor in classifying Holodomor 1932-1933 as a crime against humanity is proving conscious acts aimed at “the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population” (Article 7 § 2.b of the RS ICC).
As mentioned in items 1 and 2[1]
, the grain requisition quota for 1930 was already excessive, however
the Soviet leadership increased it still further from 440 to 490 poods,
and the 1930 quota was fulfilled already in spring 1931, taking away all
grain reserves. It did not prove possible to meet the increased quota,
although 127 million poods of grain were collected, this being 127
million poods more than in 1929. The grain requisition quota for 1931
issued from the Kremlin according to Stalin’s policy of “geeing up” once
again significantly exceeded Ukraine’s capacity, being 510 million
poods. At the end of the year the quota had been 79% met (Item 3). To
fulfil the “first commandment” – first meet the quota and only then
settle with people for their labour – in January 1932, on Molotov’s
instructions, grain began being taken away, this leading to famine in
the first half of 1932. As a result of the grain being taken away, tens
of thousands of peasants in Ukraine died of starvation during this
period (Items 4, 5 and 6). It was only at the end of April 1932 that the
State became providing food aid to the starving (Item 7).
The
“first commandment” and “geeing up” showed that the Soviet leadership
had a purely functional attitude to the villages, seeing them as merely a
source of grain supplies for accelerating industrialization.
Furthermore the food produced on the kolkhozes was considered to be just
as much State property as the products from sovkhozes. Yet sovkhoz
employees received wages, while those who worked on kolkhozes were
supposed to receive produce for their labour. Since all the grain had
been handed over to the State to meet the quota and almost nothing
remained, the kolkhoz workers were simply working for nothing. Kosior
reports that half the kolkhozes did not pay anything at all for people’s
labour in 1931.[2]
H.
Petrovsky and V. Chubar in their letters to Stalin and Molotov at the
beginning of June wrote of famine in the villages resulting from the
impossibility of meeting an unrealistic quota and the need to increase
food aid. The response was an irritated reaction from Stalin and the
cessation of food imports into Ukraine (Items 7-9). Despite the request
from the Ukrainian Party organization to reduce the grain requisition
quota for 1932 and the presentation at the III All-Ukrainian Party
Conference on 6-7 July of graphic accounts of cases of starvation and
criticism of policy in the villages, Molotov and Kaganovich forced the
conference to adopt the unrealistic quota from the Kremlin (Item10).
In
justifying the need for additional food aid, both Chubar and Petrovsky
in their letters wrote of possible theft of grain from the new harvest.
Chubar warned: “So as to be better stocked up for the winter then
last year, wide-scale grain thefts will begin. What is being seen at
present – digging up planted potatoes, beetroot, onion, etc – will take
on much greater proportions during the period when the winter crops
ripen since the food stocks from the resources provided will not last
beyond 1 July”[3]. Petrovsky wrote about the same thing: “Assistance
needs to be provided also because the peasants will be driven through
starvation to pick unripe grain and a lot of it will be wasted”.[4].
Stalin and Kaganovich responded by stopping food aid and initiating
the draconian “5 ears of corn law” – the Resolution “On the protection
of property of State enterprises, kolkhozes and cooperatives, and the
consolidation of socialist property”. For theft of kolkhoz and
cooperative property this envisaged the death penalty with the
confiscation of all property, with the possibility of commuting this to a
term of imprisonment of no less than 10 years where there were
mitigating circumstances (Item 11).
One can conclude that
Stalin’s policy in the villages meant the deliberate deprivation of
access by kolkhoz workers and independent farmers to the grain they had
grown unless they had fulfilled the grain requisition quota with this
leading to a part of the population dying of starving. This part of the
population was eliminated through the conscious policy of the Soviet
State. The death of a part of the population thus took place as a
result of their knowingly being deprived of access to food products,
this constituting a crime against humanity. The State policy of
grain requisitions applied to all rural regions of the USSR, therefore
this conclusion covers all those who died of starvation on the territory
of the Soviet Union during that period.
Holodomor 1932 – 1933 – the crime of genocide
The object of the crime of genocide
According to the Convention, genocide is understood as certain “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. “According
to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the term ‘national
group’ refers to ‘a collection of people who are perceived to share a
legal bond based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of
rights and duties’”[5].
The interpretation of “national group” gives grounds for viewing as the
object of the crime of genocide a part of the Ukrainian people – the
total of victims of Holodomor and of political repression in Ukraine
during the period from November 1932 to August 1933, regardless of
ethnic, religious or other features.
At the same time, the
element of destruction of a part of the group lies in “the destruction
of a considerable part of the specific group … the part of the group
should be sufficiently large to have an impact on the group as a whole”[6]
The practice of the international tribunals demonstrates that for the
action to be classified as genocide it is sufficient that the
perpetrator of the crime intended to eliminate a significant part of the
group. In determining what part of a group can be considered
significant, both quantitative and qualitative indicators need to be
applied. For example, the Trial Chamber of the International Tribunal
for Former Yugoslavia in a judgment on the case of Jelisic (1999)[7] stressed that:
«82.
/…/ As a crime directed towards a group, the genocidal intent is
necessarily directed towards mass crimes. The genocidal intent must
therefore cover a substantial part of the targeted group. According to
the Trial Chamber, this can take two forms: 1) the intent can be to
destroy a large number of members of the targeted group or 2) to target a
limited number of selected people, whose disappearance would endanger
the survival of the group”.
An analysis of demographic
statistics undertaken by Ukrainian and foreign researchers indicates
that the direct losses to the Ukrainian people as a result of Holodomor
1932-1933 according to some calculations constitute 3-3.9 million
people, and according to others – 4-4.8 million.[8].
The largest number of deaths is for the period under consideration
(November 1932 – August 1933) since during the period from January to
October 1932 tens of thousands died of starvation. In any case the
number of people who died of starvation during the period in question is
not less than 10% (according to other figures – 15%) of the total
population of Ukraine. This percentage of the Ukrainian people is
considerable and can be considered as the object of the crime of
genocide in accordance with the Convention on Genocide of 1948.
It
should be stressed that the secret resolutions of the Central Committee
of the All-Soviet Communist Party [Bolshevik] (Item 26) totally changed
the policy of Ukrainization and placed the responsibility for the food
crisis not only on the peasants, but on the leaders of Ukrainization,
marking the beginning of the elimination of Ukrainian national
communists. During this period numerous representatives of the cultural,
economic and political elite were repressed (cf. Items 39, 40 and 41).
This had enormous impact on the development of the Ukrainian people. In
describing the group, therefore, we should include not only peasants who
died of starvation, but also those who died as victims of political
repression.
According to the definition of the International
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the case of Bosnia Herzegovina v.
Serbia and Montenegro, an “ethnic group” is “a cultural, linguistic or other clearly marked feature distinguishing a minority, both within the country, and outside it.”[9].
This
understanding of “ethnic group” with regard to the position of
Ukrainians living in Kuban and the events of 1932-1933 gives grounds for
considering Ukrainians of Kuban as an ethnic group which became the object of the crime of genocide. The following arguments provide confirm the justification of this assertion.
Ukrainization
of territory with a dense population of ethnic Ukrainians had been the
official policy of the USSR. According to the All-Soviet Census of 1938
there were 915 thousand Ukrainians in Kuban, this being 62% of the
population. They had generally retained their language and culture. 729
thousand of them said that Ukrainian was their native language. In some
areas of Kuban Ukrainians made up 80% or even 90% of the population[10], while overall in the North Caucuses there were 3,06 thousand Ukrainians.
The
policy of Ukrainization was supported by the Ukrainian population of
the North Caucuses Territory. The number of Ukrainian school students
studying in Ukrainian schools increased from 12% in the 1928/1929
academic year to 80% in 1931/1932[11].
The cultural-educational policy was developed under the management of
the People’s Commissariat for Education of the UkrSSR and of Mykola
Skrypnyk directly, and was funded from the Ukrainian State Budget.[12].
However the secret resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party from 14 December 1932 put an end to Ukrainization.
Ukrainian cultural life in Kuban came under attack: all Ukrainian
schools and publishing was now in Russian, newspapers and journals in
Ukrainian were closed down, as in fact were many other Ukrainian
cultural institutions. Many of the people working in them were repressed
as enemies of the Soviet regime (Items 46. 47 and 48). Another secret
resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from
15 December also stopped Ukrainization in other regions where there were
dense populations of Ukrainians.
The elements of the crime of genocide
The
death from starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants as well as
hundreds of thousands of peasants from Kuban was caused by the following
actions of the Party-Soviet-economic leadership of the USSR:
1.
The deliberate forced imposition of an unrealistic grain requisition
quota from the 1932 harvest, despite the protests from Ukrainian leaders
(Item 10);
2. The passing by the Central Executive Committee
and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR [Sovnarkom] of the
Resolution “On the protection of property of State enterprises,
kolkhozes and cooperatives, and the consolidation of socialist property”
(“The 5 ears of corn law”) (Item 11);
3. The Directive passed by
the CC CPU on 29 October at the initiative of Molotov, and the
telegram from Molotov and Khataevych from 5 November on intensifying
repressive measures (Items 16 and 17);
4. The Resolutions of the
CC CPU from 18 and of the Council of People’s Commissars of the
Ukrainian SSR from 20 November ““On measures to increase grain
requisitions» prepared by the Molotov Commission (Items 18, 19 and 20)
and the resolutions of the politburo of the North Caucasus Territory
Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Russia,
prepared by the Kaganovich Commission which ordered the confiscation of
grain previously distributed, and the introduction of fines in kind.
5.
The creation of “troikas” and Special Commissions which were given the
power to carry out accelerated examinations of “grain cases” and to
apply the death penalty (Items 21, 22)..
6. The practice of
placing villages and kolkhozes on “black boards” at Kaganovich’s
initiative, first in Kuban (through resolution of the politburo of the
North Caucasus Territory Communist Party from 4 November (Item 4), and
then in Ukraine (Resolution of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive
Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the UkrSSR from 6
December, (Item 23)).
7. Blanket searches of peasant’s farmsteads
in December 1932 in order to find “squandered and stolen grain” on the
basis of the resolutions from 18 and 20 November 1932 (Items 23 and 27),
intensification of repression over “grain cases” in Ukraine (Item 28)
and Kuban (Item 45).
8. The secret resolutions of the Central
Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from 14 and 15 December on
intensifying repression against “saboteurs with Party tickets in their
pockets” and stopping Ukrainization in Kuban and other regions with a
dense Ukrainian population in the USSR . These resolutions set in motion
repression of those Ukrainian communists active in all aspects of
Ukrainization. (Items 25 and 26).
9. Deportation to the North of more than 62 thousand Kuban peasants for “sabotage” (Item 44).
10.
The Decision of the CC CPU on confiscating seed funds from 29 December
1932, passed under pressure from Kaganovich (Item 27).
11.
Stalin’s telegram from 1 January 1933 which demanded that grain be
handed over and threatening with repression those who did not comply
(Items 29 and 30).
12. The Directive from Sovnarkom and the
Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from 22 January which
imposed a blockade of those starving in Ukraine and Kuban and introduced
patrol units at railway stations and roads (Items 32 and 33).
13.
Through a government resolution from 17 February 1933, initiated by
Khataevych and Postyshev, collection of seeds was carried out through
grain requisitions, with a part of what was collected being given to
those who confiscated the grain (Item 36)..
14. According to a
Resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from
31 March 1933, initiated by Postyshev, food aid was provided only to
those capable of working (Item 37).
15. The political repressions
of 1933 against the intelligentsia and those communists linked with
Ukrainization, initiated by Postyshev, and the campaign against
““skrypnykovshchyna” [from the name of Mykola Skrypnyk, a key figure in
Ukrainization - translator] (Items 39, 40 and 41).
16. The total destruction of all ethnic-cultural forms of existence for Ukrainians in Kuban (Item 48).
In their entirety the actions listen here mean inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (Article
II (c) of the Convention). It is also possible to prove that these
acts were deliberate. It will similarly be proven that Holodomor
1932-1933 was a crime against humanity since in the given circumstances
the death of a significant part of the population took place as the result of the intentional deprivation of access to food (Article 7 § 1.b of the RC ICC).
The
course of events which led to genocide can be briefly outlined as
follows. After the unrealistic grain requisition quota was not met,
Stalin placed the blame for this on the peasants who, in his view, had
sabotaged the gathering of the harvest, and on the Ukrainian communists
who had encouraged them in this. Party and government decisions were
taken demanding that grain be returned, paid for in kind for labour from
the next harvest. They also introduced fines in kind and allowed
searches aimed at confiscating grain already distributed, as well as
encouraging the GPU to intensify political repression through
accelerated procedure and the use of the death penalty.
Blanket
searches and other punitive measures did not bring the result, and
therefore at the beginning of 1933, the peasants received an ultimatum:
either voluntarily hand over all grain or be severely punished. For
this searches and fines in kind were merged into one punitive action,
with the peasants having all food confiscated. On 22 January 1933, a
blockade was imposed preventing peasants leaving in search of food in
areas which were in a better position. This led to mass starvation and
the death of millions of people in the villages. At the same time a
campaign of political repression was launched against Ukrainian national
communists, those linked with Ukrainization. They were blamed for
sabotaging the grain requisition quotas and were declared enemies of the
people. Ukrainization was stopped, and Ukrainian cultural life in areas
where there was a dense Ukrainian population effectively stood still.
Determined
and forced russification of Ukrainians resulted in a formal reduction
in their number. According to the census of 1937 3 million citizens of
the Russian SSR called themselves Ukrainians (as opposed to 7.8 million
in the 1926 Census). With the cessation of Ukrainization the younger
generation of Ukrainians lost the possibility of preserving their own
ethnic identity. It can therefore be said that in the case of Ukrainians
from Kuban children of the group were forcibly transferred to another group (Article II(e) of the Convention.
Motives for the crime of genocide
The
Convention on Genocide does not demand proof of the perpetrator’s
motives. At the same time, establishing the motives for why a crime was
committed can help determine the criminal intent of the perpetrator of a
crime.
The key to understanding the motives for creating an
artificial Holodomor can be found in a letter from Stalin to Kaganovich
from 11 August 1932. We quote the relevant extract.
: […] 3)
The most important thing now is Ukraine. The current situation in
Ukraine is terribly bad. It’s bad in the Party. They say that, in two
regions in Ukraine (Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk, I think) around fifty
district committees have spoken out against the grain requisition quota,
calling it unrealistic. Things are no better, so they say, in the other
district committees. What is this? It’s not a party, but a parliament,
and a caricature of a parliament. Instead of managing the districts,
Kosior has been manoeuvring between the directives of the Party Central
Committee and the demands of the district committees: Now look where
he’s ended up. Lenin was right that a person who doesn’t have the
courage to go against the tide at the necessary time can’t be a real
Bolshevism leader. Things are bad with the soviets. Chubar is no leader.
And it’s bad with the GPU. Redens isn’t up to being in charge of the
fight against counter-revolution in a republic as large and specific as
Ukraine. If we don’t immediately set to straightening out the situation
in Ukraine, we could lose Ukraine. Remember that Pilsudski never rests,
his espionage capabilities in Ukraine are far stronger than Redens and
Kosior realize. And remember too that, in the Ukrainian Communist Party
(500 000 members, ha ha !), there are not just a few (no, not a few!)
rotten types, conscious and unconscious ‘petliurites’, and also direct
agents of Pilsudski. As soon as things get worse, these elements will
lose no time in opening up a front within (and outside) the Party,
against the Party. The worst thing is that the Ukrainian leaders don’t
see these dangers
It can’t continue like this.
It’s necessary:
a)
to take Kosior away from Ukraine and for you to replace him, while
remaining secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist
Party;
b) after this transfer Balytsky to Ukraine for the
post of head of the Ukrainian GPU (or the Authorized Representative of
the GPU in Ukraine, since there isn’t, I don’t think, the post of head
of the GPU of Ukraine), while keeping his position as deputy head of the
SGPU, and make Redens Balytsky’s deputy for Ukraine;
c)
in several months after this replace Chubar with another comrade, say,
Hrynko or somebody else, and make Chubar Molotov’s deputy in Moscow
(Kosior can be made one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of
the Soviet Communist Party;
d) Set ourselves the task of
turning Ukraine as soon as possible into a real fortress of the USSR,
into a truly exemplary republic. No money should be spared on this.
Without
this and similar measures (economic and political consolidation of
Ukraine, in the first instance its border raions, and so forth), I
repeat, we could lose Ukraine.
The economic and social crisis
which gripped the USSR at the beginning of 1932 threatened the Soviet
regime. Famine caused by the campaign against kulaks, forced
collectivization, bad organization of the kolkhozes, their poverty, the
merciless and never-ending confiscation of grain for export so as to pay
back foreign debt, resistance from the peasants who didn’t want to
recognize the “new serfdom” and work without pay, problems with
industrialization, all of these things aroused doubts in the Party and
in the correctness of the chosen path, concealed, or sometimes open
opposition. An economic crisis could become political.
Some
Russian government officials – O. Smirnov, V. Tolmachov, M. Eismont –
expressed the view that Stalin was responsible for the failure of grain
requisitions, and blamed him. On 27 November 1932 Stalin called a joint
session of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Committee of
the Soviet Communist Party at which he spoke out against Smirnov’s
group. He said that anti-Soviet elements had penetrated kolkhozes and
sovkhozes in order to organize sabotage and destructive measures, and
that a significant percentage of rural communists had the wrong attitude
to kolkhozes and sovkhozes. Stalin called for the use of coercion to
eradicate sabotage and anti-Soviet phenomena, and stressed: “It would be
unwise if communists, working on the premise that the kolkozes are a
socialist form of management, did not respond to the blow inflicted by
these particular kolkhoz workers or kolkhozes with a devastating blow”.[13].
The
greatest threat to Stalin’s power was in his view Ukraine. He was
clearly disturbed by the resistance of the Ukrainian Politburo to the
passing of a grain requisition quota and the adoption of the “5 ears of
wheat law” (see Items 15, 16 and 17). Stalin was afraid of a union
between “petlurites” and Pilsudski, and suspected Ukrainian communists
of having connections with the Poles. It is typical that having written “The most important thing now is Ukraine”, he put the words “most important thing” in italics. Stalin
was most afraid of losing Ukraine which over the period of
Ukrainization had developed its own nationally oriented communist
–Soviet elite (Ukrainians made up the absolute majority of the members
of the Ukrainian Communist Party) and was trying to get the territories
of adjoining regions of Russia and Byelorussia where there was a
majority Ukrainian population, for example, Kuban joined to Ukraine.
This elite was carrying out an active policy of Ukrainization there, and
could generally in the conditions of crisis exercise its rights and
declare its withdrawal from the USSR.
The policy of
Ukrainization by the end of the 1920s had gone well beyond the
boundaries set by the Bolsheviks. Ukrainian national consciousness had
by that stage taken on proportions which placed the united structure of
the USSR in jeopardy. Ukraine was endeavouring to carry out autonomous
policy, including with regard to international relations. One of the
leaders of the CC CPU, Volodymyr Zatonsky, asserted that the first aim
of Ukrainization was the consolidation of the Ukrainian SSR as a State
organization within the framework of a Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. Such a course of events could not suit Stalin and his
henchmen. If the process in Ukraine continued in the same direction,
this would significantly influence all processes in the USSR, since
Ukraine at that time was a single national and State unit which could
stand up to pressure from the Kremlin. For these reasons Stalin went out
for direct war against Ukrainian peasants as the social resistance to
the State organism. He decided to pay the villages a preventive
devastating blow so as to eliminate the threat to his regime. As James
Mace very accurately expressed it back in 1982: “Stalin wanted to destroy the Ukrainian people as a political factor and as a social organism[14]. This was the motive of the crime.
Kuban
was the second after Ukraine and single region of the USSR where more
than two thirds of the population were ethnic Ukrainians. .Of all
regions with a dense Ukrainian population, it was the one most under the
influence of Ukraine. Kuban was also a centre for Cossacks who were no
less favourite targets for Stalin than Ukrainians and were constantly
subjected to repression by the Soviet regime. Furthermore, like in
Ukraine, there was great resistance to collectivization. It was thus no
chance that Stalin considered the Kuban Cossacks to be a source of
danger for his power.
Intent
The definitive
element for a crime being classified as genocide according to the
Convention is that there was direct intent to eliminate the members of a
particular group by virtue of their being part of the group. The
actions set down in the provisions of Article II of the Convention
clearly demand the presence of certain subject factors, including
intent, to make the crime that of genocide: “the actions indicated in
Article II must have been committed with intent to eliminate [the
defended] group totally or a part of it”.[15]
Did
Stalin have the intention to organize an artificial famine? Scholars
are divided in their answer to this question. One group of researchers
believes that the mass famine was begun deliberately, organized from
back in 1930 in order to reduce the vital capacity of the Ukrainian
people, turning them into slaves who would meekly work in kolkhozes and
not make any encroachments against the Soviet regime. Another group
considers that Stalin’s policy was criminal however explains the famine
as being caused by a complex political situation, the wish to modernize
the economy, and payment of interest on foreign loans. This group denies
direct intent to organize an artificial famine and does not agree with
the classification of Holodomor 1932-1933 as an act of genocide.
In
our view it is not possible to say definitely whether Stalin had a plan
in advance for eliminating a part of the Ukrainian peasants by
organizing an artificial famine. Here it is useful to apply the approach
taken by researcher into famine in the USSR Andrea Graziosi who made a
summary of different explanations given for the cause of Holodomor.[16].
He asserts that the famine in the third quarter of 1932 had the same
causes as the famine in the first half of 1931 – non-fulfilment of an
excessive grain requisition quota. While in October 1932 Stalin took the
decision to use famine to destroy the peasants of Ukraine and
Kuban who provided the greatest resistance to the “new serfdom”. For
example, all the actions of the Communist Party leadership of the USSR
beginning from October 1932 suggest direct intent to organize Holodomor
and political repression against those who obstructed these plans.
On
22 October 1932 Stalin gave the Molotov and Kaganovich Commissions
special powers with regard to Ukraine and Kuban in order to meet the
grain requisition quota. The decisions adopted by Party and Soviet
bodies at the initiative of these commissions (Items 16-22, 43-47) show
the intent to deprive the peasants of the grain distributed to them as
remuneration for work done, and to confiscate other food (meat,
potatoes) by means of blanket searches and fines in kind. Harsh
punishments were introduced for peasants and local functionaries
(“saboteurs” with Party tickets in their pocket”) who distributed grain
to starving peasants for their labour. Hundreds of them were executed
and thousands arrested and convicted (Item 28).
Indication of the
intention to destroy the Ukrainian “opposition” and place
responsibility on it for deliberately organizing famine can be found as
well in the plans of OGPU and their implementation. At the end of
November 1932, Stalin sent Vsevolod Balytsky from OGPU with special
powers to Ukraine. His task, set out in "Operational Order of the GPU of
the Ukrainian SSR No. 1” which spoke of “organized sabotage of the
grain requisitions and autumn sowing; organized mass-scale thefts in
kolkhozes and sovkhozes; terror against the most steadfast and
consistent communists and activists in the village; the deploying of
dozens of petlurite emissaries; the distribution of petlurite leaflets”
in Ukraine. From this it drew conclusions regarding “the
undoubted existence in Ukraine of an organized counter-revolutionary,
insurgent underground which has links abroad and with foreign
intelligence services, mainly, the Polish military headquarters”. The order ended by setting out the task: “the
basic and main task is an urgent breakthrough, uncovering and crushing
the counterrevolutionary insurgent underground and inflicting a decisive
blow against all counterrevolutionary kulak-petlurite elements which
are actively opposing and sabotaging the main measures of the Soviet
regime and Party in the villages.”[17].
In Operational Order No. 2 from 13 February 1933 of the GPU of the
Ukrainian SSR, Balytsky was already summing up the implementation of
Stalin’s Order: operational activist group No. 2 “has uncovered a
counter-revolutionary, insurgent underground in Ukraine which covered up
to 200 raions, around 30 railway stations and depots, a number of
points on the border zone. In the process of liquidating it, its link
was established with foreign Ukrainian nationalist centres (UNR, “UVO”,
UNDO) and the Polish Military Headquarters.[18] This meant that OGPU was provided with a ready strategy for uncovering artificially organized counter-terrorist organizations.
Stalin’s awareness that “the national issue is in essence a peasant issue”[19],prompted
him to solve both the national and the peasant problems together. A
plan was set in motion for destroying the national political elite, the
representatives of which were accused of being in conspiracy with
peasant saboteurs (see Stalin’s letter to Kaganovich from 11 August
1932). On 14 and 15 December 1932, the Politburo of the Central
Committee of the Soviet Communist Party passed two secret resolutions
(Items25, 26, 47, 48), which brought in special national policy with
regard to Ukrainians (it did not apply to other ethnic groups).
According to these resolutions, responsibility for the food crisis was
placed not only on the peasants, but also on the Ukrainian political
elite.
On 20 December 1932, at Kaganovich’s suggestion, the
Politburo of the CC CPU, passed a decision to seek an increase in
supplies of grain for which on 29 December an order was issued to hand
over all kolkhoz funds, including the seed fund (Item 27). None of this
can be described as anything else but as deliberately depriving the
peasants of their last reserves of grain they owned.
On 1 January
1933 a telegram was sent from the “leader, teacher and friend of all
peasants” (Item 29). It was made up of two points, the first being that
those who voluntarily handed over to the State “previously stolen and
hidden grain” would not face repression. The second point stated that
those who continued to hide it would face the harshest forms of
punishment. All grain which was not recorded had to be handed over. If
they didn’t hand it over there would be a search. If they found grain,
the punishment was the death penalty or 10 years imprisonment. If they
didn’t find it, they would take away, as a fine, other foodstuffs.
Stalin’s telegram resulted in the merging of searches and fines in kind.
Furthermore, Stalin had been informed about the results of previous
searches (Item 27) and knew that there was no grain in the villages, and
that the requisition quota could not be met. This was his “devastating
blow”[20], which demonstrates the intention to remove food from the peasants in order to organize famine.
A
Directive from Sovnarkom and the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party from 22 January 1933 prohibited the exodus of starving
peasants to other regions in search of food. This must also be viewed as
deliberate acts aimed at depriving the starving of their last options
for finding food for their families.
The political repressions of
1933 (Items 39, 40 and 41) in their turn demonstrate the intention to
destroy the political and intellectual elite of the republic.
The
intention to destroy the peasants through starvation was reflected in
the words of the Second Secretary of the CC CPU Mendel Khatayevych from
1933: “A fierce struggle is waging between the peasants and our regime.
This is a fight to the death. This year has become the test of our
strength and their resilience. The famine has proved to them who is
boss. It cost millions of lives however the kolkhoz system will last
forever. We’ve won the war!”[21]
The Perpetrator of the crime
The
main organizer and ideologue of the genocide was Joseph Stalin himself.
Three of his hendhmen – Lazar Kaganovich, Viacheslav Molotov and Pavlo
Postyshev – were the direct organizers of Holodomor in Ukraine and in
Kuban. It was carried out also by the Party – State apparatus of the
All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) Party, the Communist Party
(Bolshevik) of Ukraine and the North Caucuses Territory Committee of the
All-Soviet Communist Party (Bolshevik) Party (Stanislav Kosior, Vlas
Chubar, Mendel Khatayevych, Boris Sheboldaev, Anastas Mikoyan) and the
repressive-punitive bodies of the OGPU and GPU of the UkrSSR (Vsevolod
Balytsky, Henrikh Yagoda, Stanislav Pedens) and the courts.
Thousands
of local activists, members of committees of poorly-off peasants
directly implemented Party-State decisions regarding searches and
confiscation of grain and other food.
As follows from the conclusion of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of 1998 – “the
offender is considered guilty since he knew or should have known that
the acts he committed would destroy in part or totally the group”.[22]
– Stalin and his henchmen should be considered guilty of genocide.
They knew of the size of the harvest, knew and understood the
consequences of confiscating food and preventing peasants from leaving
regions gripped by famine.
The Consequences of Holodomor 1932-1933
The consequences of Holodomor 1932-1933 were terrible. They concern “the dead, the living and those unborn” {Taras Shevchenko). Besides millions who died of starvation or who were not born, which in itself had considerable impact on the genofund and development of the Ukrainian people, Holodomor had a devastating effect on those who survived it. It adversely affected their level of social and political activeness and instilled fear of the authorities. The historical memory and the psychology of those who survived 1932-1933 were ravaged by memories of cannibalism, denunciations of neighbours etc. The tragic events are to this day reflected in the psychological makeup of their descendants.
Holodomor
and the destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the elite, which
were taboo subjects right up to the end of the1980s, disrupted the
intellectual and cultural development of the Ukrainian nation, led to a
loss of identity and common values. The tragedy of Holodomor also
resulted in an unrecognized inferiority complex for a large number of
Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s post-genocide society badly needs
conscience at rest, liberation from psychological complexes, freedom
from fear. This is impossible without public recognition that Holodomor
was a crime, and this should be at a legal level. This is the moral
duty of the nation before those who perished. It is vital for the
restoration of historical justice, and for the strengthening of the
Ukrainian people’s immune system against political repression, violence
and unwarranted State coercion.
We would note also that the
European community insists upon the investigation and condemnation of
the crimes of totalitarian regimes. The Resolution of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe 1481 (2006) “The need for
international condemnation of Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-1933” states:
«The
fall of totalitarian communist regimes in central and eastern Europe
has not been followed in all cases by an international investigation of
the crimes committed by them. Moreover, the authors of these crimes have
not been brought to trial by the international community, as was the
case with the horrible crimes committed by National Socialism (Nazism).
Consequently,
public awareness of crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes
is very poor. Communist parties are legal and active in some countries,
even if in some cases they have not distanced themselves from the crimes
committed by totalitarian communist regimes in the past.
The
Assembly is convinced that the awareness of history is one of the
preconditions for avoiding similar crimes in the future. Furthermore,
moral assessment and condemnation of crimes committed play an important
role in the education of young generations. The clear position of the
international community on the past may be a reference for their future
actions.
Moreover, the Assembly believes that those victims of crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes who are still alive or their families, deserve sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings.»
The options for legal classification of Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide
We have endeavoured to demonstrate that the famine in Ukraine of 1932-1933 has all the necessary elements of a crime against humanity in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998 and of genocide according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. The object, subject, event and makeup of the crime of genocide have been established, as well as its motive and the direct intent to commit this crime. Can one however apply the provisions of these international agreements with regard to events in Ukraine 1932-1933, and in keeping with them classify Holodomor 1932-1933 as a crime against humanity and act of genocide? Do these international agreements have retroactive force in the given case? The following questions arise: 1) whether there are punishable acts which were not at the formal juridical level previously recognized as offences or crimes; 2) whether there is no time limit for criminal prosecution over crimes committed in 1932-1933.
Pursuant to Article 7 § 1 of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), «No
one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act
or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national
or international law at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a
heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time
the criminal offence was committed». This fundamental principle is
enshrined in the first paragraph of Article 15 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The second paragraphs of these
same articles of both the Convention and the Covenant states that
offences shall be punishable if at the time they were committed, they
were considered crimes “according to the general principles of law”. For
example, Article 7 § 2 of the 1950 Convention reads that: “«This
article shall not prejudice the trial and punishment of any person for
any act or omission which, at the time when it was committed, was
criminal according the general principles of law recognized by civilized
nations.» On the basis of this provision, some researchers have
concluded that the Convention on Genocide can have retroactive force.
Certainly mass extermination of people, later called genocide, like
other crimes against humanity, was classified as a crime by civilized
nations earlier as well. Moreover, according to the UN Convention on
the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes
against Humanity of 1968, no statutory limitations apply to the crime of
genocide. This means that any statutory limitation set down in law,
does not apply to judicial prosecution and punishment for war crimes and
crimes against humanity
Other lawyers reject the possibility of
applying the Convention on Genocide with respect to events which took
place before it came into effect. They consider that the commitments
taken on through the UN Convention of 1968 to not apply statutory
limitations in the case of crimes against humanity, including genocide,
do not indicate retroactive force at the time of the 1948 Convention,
and that application of Article 7 § 2 of the European Convention and
Article 15 § 2 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is not
possible since the international community had still not recognized such
acts as a crime at that time. Furthermore, according to Article 58 of
Ukraine’s Constitution “No one shall bear responsibility for acts that,
at the time they were committed, were not deemed by law to be an
offence”. The Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR of 1927 did not
include genocide among criminally liable acts. The word “genocide” did
not then exist, it being suggested for use by the author of the
Convention on Genocide Raphael Lemkin in 1944..
These lawyers also point out that pursuant to Article 3 § 3 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code of 2001, “the
criminality of actions, as well as whether they are subject to
punishment and other criminal-legal consequences, are determined by this
Code”. According to Article 4 § 2 of the Criminal Code which
regulates issues regarding the force of the law on criminal liability in
time, the criminality and liability of an action are determined by the
law on criminal liability which was in force at the time the act was
committed.
The principle prohibiting retroactive force of a law
which establishes criminal liability is one of the fundamental
principles of law. This principle is enshrined in Article 28 of the UN
Conference on the Law of Treaties (Vienna 1969), according to which “Unless
a different intention appears from the treaty or is otherwise
established, its provisions do not bind a party in relation to any act
or fact which took place or any situation which ceased to exist before
the date of the entry into force of the treaty with respect to that
party”.
The Convention on Genocide of 1948 does not contain
provisions regarding its own retroactive force, which does not make it
possible to apply it for recognizing as genocide actions committed
before it came into effect. The 1948 Convention can thus not be applied
for classification of Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide.
One can
conclude that the issue around whether there can be retrospective
application of the Convention on Genocide of 1948 remains in dispute.
However the Convention can always be used to provide a historical
assessment of certain events. Such an assessment was given by the
Verkhovna Rada which “recognizing Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine in
accordance with the UN Convention from 9 December 1948 on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as a deliberate act of mass
destruction of people; passed the Law “On Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine
“. Article 1 of this Law recognizes Holodomor to have been genocide of
the Ukrainian people.
Holodomor 1932-1933 was condemned by 64
member-states of the UN in a joint declaration from 7 November 2003, by
member –states of OSCE in a joint declaration from 3 November 2007 and
by UNESCO on 1 November 2007 in its Resolution “On Remembrance of
victims of Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine”.
Holodomor 1932-1933
has been recognized as an act of genocide by the parliaments of
Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Columbia, Ecuador, Estonia,
Hungary,
On 3 July 2008 the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly passed a Resolution “Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine” which states that “Recalling
that the rule of the totalitarian Stalinist regime in the former USSR
had led to tremendous human rights violations depriving millions of
people of their right to live, … The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly:
pays tribute to the innocent lives of millions of Ukrainians who
perished during the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933 as a result of the mass
starvation brought about by the cruel deliberate actions and policies of
the totalitarian Stalinist regime … Strongly encourages all parliaments
to adopt acts regarding recognition of the Holodomor”. .
On 21 November 2007 the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert
Poettering made a statement about Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine. He
called for remembrance of Holodomor and stated that the famine, which
had taken the lives of 4-6 million Ukrainians during the winter of
1932-1933 had been cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin’ s regime in
order to force through collectivization against the will of rural people
in Ukraine. “Today we know that the famine, known as Holodomor, was in
reality a terrible crime against humanity,” Mr Poettering said.
The
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has included on its
agenda consideration of a report on the issue of condemning Holodomor as
a crime of the totalitarian regime in Ukraine and in other regions of
the former USSR. The PACE Political Committee on 26 June 2008 appointed a
rapporteur on this issue – PACE Vice President Alexander Biberaj
(Albania). Two years have been set aside for preparation of the report,
however Alexander Biberaj expects to complete it much earlier.
The
above-mentioned facts demonstrate the attention of the world community
to Holodomor 1932-1933 and the understanding of the need for a legal
qualification of Holodomor as a crime against humanity and the crime of
genocide. For this it would be possible to amend the Convention on
Genocide of 1948, by adding a provision about the retrospective force of
the Convention with respect of events which took place from the
beginning of the twentieth century. Crimes of the totalitarian regimes
in the twentieth century, in the first instance of the communist regime
in the USSR, require legal assessment, condemnation and punishment.
There are also other reasons for introducing amendments to the
Convention. Its scope is too narrow to respond adequately to the
tempestuous events of the second half of the twentieth century. We would
point out that the signing of the Convention in its present form was a
compromise between Western governments and the USSR whose representative
insisted on removing victims of “political groups” from the list of
victims. It was criticized by scholars for this almost immediately after
its signing, as well as for its concentration of the purely physical
side of violence.
The domestic legislation of some countries has
gone further in defining genocide. For example, the 1991 French
Criminal Code adds to the groups listed in the Convention “a group defined on the basis of any other normative criterion”.[23].
With respect to this it is worth recalling the comments from the author
of the Convention Raphael Lemkin, who a short time before its adoption,
noted that "Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the
immediate destruction of a nation, It is intended rather to signify a
coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of
essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of
annihilating the groups themselves."[24].
Another
approach to achieving a legal classification of Holodomor 1932-1933
would be in the founding of a special International Tribunal for the
legal classification of the famine of 1931-1933 as a crime of the
totalitarian regime of the USSR (analogous to the International
Nuremberg Tribunal set up in 1945, the International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia, established in 1993 and the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1994). This approach seems more
realistic than making amendments to the 1948 Convention. The creation of
an International Tribunal for the legal classification of the famine of
1931-1933 as a crime of the communist regime of the USSR could be
approved by inter-state organizations – the UN, the Council of Europe,
OSCE.
An international tribunal, if created, should use the
results of the US Congress Commission on the Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933
led by James Mace, the International Commission on the Crimes of the
Famine 1932-1933 in Ukraine, headed by Jacob Sandberg, archival
documents and testimony of victims and witnesses of Holodomor gathered
since Ukraine gained independence.
It should be especially
stressed that although the Russian Federation is the successor to the
USSR, the Russian State is not responsible for the crimes of the
totalitarian communist regime of the USSR. They do not fall into the
list of rights and duties which the Russian Federation inherited from
the USSR. No claims for compensation can be lodged against a
non-existent state. Furthermore, the Russian people were victims of
these crimes together with the Ukrainian, Kazakh and other peoples, as
well as social and political groups, and they should In the same way
classify the famine, collectivization and elimination of entire social
groups – the nobility, the Cossacks, etc, as have other peoples of the
former USSR. Evil should be named and punished. .
General conclusions
1. The deaths of tens of thousands of people from starvation in Ukraine from January – October 1932 were as a result of a crime against humanity organized by the Party-Soviet leadership of the USSR.
2.
The death of millions of people in Ukraine from starvation and political
repression during the period from November 1932 to August 1933
corresponds to the definition of genocide in the UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on 9
December 1948, in particular Article II (c) «Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part».
3. The
deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from starvation and political
repression in Kuban during the period from November 1932 to August 1933
corresponds to the definition of genocide in the UN Convention from 9
December with respect to Article II (c) «Deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part» and (e) “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. .
4. Holodomor
was the result of deliberate and systematic action by the totalitarian
Soviet regime for which there is documentary evidence which was aimed at
“the destruction of the Ukrainian people as a political factor and as a
social organism” (James Mace).
5. The terrible
consequences of Holodomor 1932-1933 require legal classification of
Holodomor as a crime of the totalitarian regime of the USSR.
6. Some
researchers believe it possible to apply the UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on 9
December 1948,to make a legal classification of Holodomor 1932-1933 as
the crime of genocide, while others deny this. The issue has yet to be
finally resolved.
7. In order to establish the legal
classification of Holodomor as a crime, it is proposed that an
International Tribunal be set up to make a legal classification of the
famine of 1931-1933 as a crime of the totalitarian regime of the USSR.
The decision to create such a tribunal could be approved by inter-state
organizations – the UN, the Council of Europe, OSCE.
Appendix
Brief description of the historical facts 1930 - 1933
The 1930 harvest
1.
The requisition quota for 1930 for Ukraine was set in April 1930 at 440
million poods (this despite the fact that the Ukrainian Grain Centre
was expecting a harvest of 425-430 million poods),and in September was
increased to 472 million poods. However this quota could also not be met
since there were already no grain reserves in the villages. On 27
January 1931 the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet
Communist Party (Bolshevik) [hereafter Politburo] stated that the
villages owed 34 million poods. Stalin reduced the debt to 25 million
poods and ordered the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Ukraine (hereafter CC CPU) to declare February a month of accelerated
grain requisitions and to fulfil the quota[25].
2.
Sowing began, yet the previous year’s quota could still not be met. At
the beginning of May V. Molotov reported that the harvest quota for 1930
was returning to the previous figure of 490 million poods (“geeing
up”). The leadership of the republic was forced to recommence a
requisition campaign for the previous year’s grain. After taking away
all grain reserves, Ukraine achieved the previous version of the quota
which in February 1931 seemed unattainable. By June 1931, in the
agricultural sector (kolkhozes and independent farmers) 393 million
poods from the 1930 harvest had been gathered, and in all for the
republic – 471 million poods. This was 167 million poods more than the
figure for 1929.[26]
The 1931 harvest. The first wave of famine
3.
In the requisition quota for 1931 even more demands were imposed on
Ukraine. The agricultural sector was set a quota for 434 million poods,
i.e. 41 million poods more than the amount of grain actually handed over
for 1930. The overall requisition quota was set at 510 million poods.
At the end of 1931 this quota had only been 79% met[27]
Molotov was sent to Kharkiv to intensify the requisition process. As
the reports of the Party leaders indicate, this “intensification”, in
accordance with Molotov’s directives and the Resolution of the CC CPU
from 19 December 1931 turned into searches by local activists to
confiscate “grain squandered or stolen from kolkhozes”. Until the quota
was fulfilled, kolkhoz workers could not receive grain for their labour
therefore any grain found in a peasant’s home was a priori considered
squandered or stolen.[28]
However the grain was confiscated regardless of whether the kolkhoz
workers had fulfilled their obligation to the State. The requisition
quota could still not be achieved. As of 25 June 1932 the quota was only
86.3% met.[29]
4.
The confiscation of grain during the first half of 1932 resulted in
hunger which in some regions turned into real famine. A similar
situation was seen in other agricultural regions of the USSR, however in
Ukraine the famine was on a wider scale since the quota, being more
excessive, was achieved to a worse extent and therefore considerably
more pressure was brought to bear. Tens of thousands died in this
famine. In 1931-1932 it was only in Kazakhstan that the famine was on a
greater scale. There hundreds of thousands of people died.
5.
A large number of peasants left their villages in search of food. As of
the middle of July 1932, according to OGPU figures in some rural areas
of Ukraine up to half of the population had left. 116 thousand peasants
had left 21 raions[30].
If you extend this figure to cover the entire number of raions – 484,
then the approximate number of peasants fleeing starvation would be
around 2 million, 700 thousand. This migration elicited strong
irritation among the Soviet Party leaders, however at that time they did
not obstruct wide-scale moves in search of food.
6. We
can cite testimony about the situation with starvation in the
countryside. In April 1932 the Deputy People’s Commissar of Agriculture
in the USSR A. Hrynevych arrived in the Zinovyevsky raion (now the
Kirovohrad region) in order to see how the sowing was getting on. In a
reporting note to the People’s Commissar Y. Yakovlev he says that the
raion has been 98% collectivized, since 1 January 28.3 thousand peasants
have left, including all the qualified tractor drivers (the total
population of the raion was about 100 thousand). Those who’ve remained
are mostly going hungry with kolkhoz workers’ grain having run out back
in March, and there are cases of people bloated from starvation. Within
the raion several dozen food points for the children of kolkhoz workers
have been organized. Those working in the field have State assistance
of 200 g. of bread a day, with tractor drivers having 400 g. The supply
of food stuffs for providing food aid to the population among raion
organizations was exhausted by 5 May. The productive forces of the raion
are so undermined that the raion will not be able to cope with
harvesting the grain without assistance in the form of forage for the
cattle and food for the kolkhoz workers, without purchasing draft
animals, without the provision of tractors and loading vehicles.[31].
7.
Worrying about the fate of the future harvest of 1932, the State began
providing assistance in the form of seeds, forage and food grain o the
countryside which was starving as the result of its policy. On 6 March
1932 the grain requisitions campaign was halted. At the end of April 15
thousand tonnes of maize and 2 thousand tonnes of wheat intended for
export were returned from ports. 9.5 million poods of grain were
purchased from China, Persia and Canada for the needs of the
Requisitions Committee.[32]
At the end of May 1932 those starving began receiving dried fish,
sardelle, cereals, and other food products. Stalin, however, considered
that “Ukraine has been given more than it should get” (from a letter to
Kaganovich from 15 June).[33] On 23 June the Politburo passed a decision to stop the supply of grain to Ukraine.[34].
8.
Stalin’s irritated reaction and the decision of the Politburo of 23
June were in total contradiction to the conclusions in the letters from
Petrovsky and Chubar to Molotov and Stalin on their impressions from
travelling about raions in the republic. Both letters reached the
Kremlin on the same day – 10 June.[35]
Hryhory Petrovsky wrote that the CC CPU was to blame for having
unconditionally agreed to a requisition quota of 510 million poods of
grain that was unrealistic for the republic. Meeting this quota had
caused starvation and many villages were still gripped by famine.
Petrovsky warned that there was still a month or 6 weeks to the new
harvest and in that time the famine would intensify unless the State
provided the villages with more food aid. Vlas Chubar in his letter
pointed out that at the beginning of June at least 100 raions were in
need of food aid (against 61 at the beginning of May). Due to the severe
situation of these raions the sowing campaign was not being carried out
satisfactorily. Chubar asked for the republic to be provided with at
least 1 million poods of food cultures as aid. He suggested rejecting a
quantitative extension of the tasks and basing themselves on qualitative
indicators.
9. Stalin reacted to Chubar and Petrovsky’s
letters in a letter to Kaganovich from 15 June in the following way:
“The first is trying on “self-criticism” so as to get new millions of
poods of grain from Moscow, the other is playing self-righteous, and
sacrificing himself to the “directive” of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party” so as to get a reduction in the grain requisition
quota. Both the first and the second are unacceptable.”"[36]. The Ukrainian village in 1932 once again faced an unrealistic quota and new waves of famine.
The Harvest of 1932: the second wave of famine
10. The
new grain requisition quota from the harvest of 1932 for Ukraine was
approved on 6 July at the III All-Ukrainian Party Conference at 356
million poods, 40 million poods less than from the 1931 harvest. Yet
this quota was also beyond the capacity of the republic’s weakened
agricultural economy. On the eve of the conference, the Politburo of the
CC CPU demanded that Molotov and Kaganovich who had been sent by Stalin
to Kharkiv reduce the quota. The Ukrainian communists also tried in
vain to influence Molotov and Kaganovich during the conference. For
example, Mykola Skrypnyk directly said that in the villages of Ukraine
everything that could be taken had already been taken away. Yet Molotov
and Kaganovich declared that “there will be no concessions, no
vacillation in implementing the tasks imposed on Ukraine by the Party
and Soviet government”[37] and that the party forces must mobilize to fight losses and squandering of grain”[38]. The Ukrainian Party leadership gave in and the quota was passed.
11.
In July 1932 2 million poods of grain from the new harvest was
requisitioned (against 16.4 million poods in July 1931). The leadership
of the Soviet Communist Party was convinced that the peasants were
stealing grain. In response and on Stalin’s initiative, on 7 August 1932
the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars
of the USSR [Sovnarkom] passed the Resolution “On the protection of
property of State enterprises, kolkhozes and cooperatives, and the
consolidation of socialist property” which was known among the
population as the “5 ears of corn law”. This imposed the death penalty
for theft of kolkhoz and cooperative property – execution (by shooting)
and confiscation of all property. For “mitigating circumstances”
execution could be commuted to a sentence of no less than 10 years.
12.
After the publication of this resolution the “Pravda” editorial office,
together with the Communist Party local machine organized a mass-scale
two week raid aimed at fighting thefts of grain in which 100 thousand
“press udarniki” [udarnik was the term for ultra-productive and
enthusiastic workers – translator]. They searched for an “underground
wheat city”, but in vain, since they found nothing.[39].
At the same time Stalin understood that he had forced the Ukrainian
leadership to take on a clearly unrealistic grain requisition quota. On
24 July, in a letter to Kaganovich and Molotov, he wrote that overall
the position of unconditional fulfilment of the quota was correct, but
that it would be necessary to make an exception for “particularly
affected raions of Ukraine”. However he preferred to announce the
reduction of the quota later “so that the sowing of winter crops will be
more energetic”[40].
And the peasants didn’t want to work in the sovkhozes, rightly
considering that they would again receive nothing for their labour.
13. In
the third quarter of 1932 starvation continued in Ukraine’s villages.
This is demonstrated, for example, in the statistics for mortality
recorded in registrar offices. For the period from March to June they
recorded 195,411 deaths, while from July to October the number was
191,105.[41].
In order to escape starvation, the kolkhoz workers even resorted to
such measures as uncovering mouse burrows. Workers from the “Peremoha”
[“Victory”] Kolkhoz in the Barvinkovsky raion of the Kharkiv region
through superhuman efforts uncovered mouse burrows over an area of 120
hectares. As a result they received 17 centners of good-quality grain.
Each burrow had between 2 and 6 kilograms of wheat.[42].
14.
The August “assault” on Ukraine’s villages gave the State 47 million
poods of grave, and in September they squeezed out another 59 million.
As of 5 October from 23,270 kolkhozes only 1,403 had met the requisition
quota. After staff changes in the Ukrainian local leadership and the
plenum of the CC CPU, on 12 October 1932 the entire Party organization
was mobilized for the gathering of the harvest. Nevertheless, the year’s
requisition quota had been 39% met as of 25 October.[43].
15.
Not wishing to admit that his policy of the “first commandment” and
“geeing up” had not worked, Stalin laid all the blame for the failure of
the grain requisitions on the peasants who had supposedly sabotaged the
collection of the grain. He considered that through the use of ever
more force the harvest could be gathered. For this he decided to send
committees with special powers to the main agricultural regions of the
country. On 22 October 1932 the Politburo passed a decision to send the
Molotov Commission to the Ukrainian SSR for 20 days, and the Kaganovich
Commission to the North Caucasus Territory. The commissions set off at
the end of October.
The activities of the Molotov Commission
16.
On 29 October 1932 at a session of the Politburo of the CC CPU,
together with the first secretaries of the regional committees of the
Party, the Commission reported that the Kremlin had agreed to a
reduction of the quota. On 30 October the final quota task divided up
into regions, sectors and grain cultures was passed. The Ukrainian SSR
had to provide 282 million poods of grain: the kolkhozes 224.1 million,
independent farmers – 36.0 million, and sovkhozes – 21 million poods. At
the same time, Molotov managed to get a directive passed by the CC CPU
on increasing help from the justice bodies to those carrying out the
grain requisitions. The courts were ordered to examine this category of
case first during outreach sessions at local level and applying harsh
repressive measures.[44].
17.
On 5 November Khataevych and Molotov sent secretaries of the regional
committees of the Party a telegram with the following: “In reports from
the regional bodies of the OGPU there are a lot of accounts of theft,
criminal squandering and concealment of kolkhoz grain with the
participation and under the leadership of the kolkhoz management,
including some communist members who are in fact kulak agents who are
dividing the kolkhozes. Despite this, the Central Committee of the CPU
does not know what the regional committees are doing to fight this
phenomenon. Noting the unacceptable inaction of the courts and
prosecutor’s office and the passivity of the press with regard to the
relevant specific facts, the CC CPU categorically demands that regional
committees take immediate and decisive measures to fight this phenomenon
with mandatory and swift undertaking of judicial repression and
merciless punishment of criminal elements in the kolkhoz management on
the basis of the well-known decree on the protection of public property,
with coverage of these facts in the press and issuing of decisions of
kolkhoz meetings which condemn these facts.”[45].
18. On
18 November 1932 the CC CPU and on 20 November the Council of People’s
Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR passed resolutions with the same name
“On measures to increase grain requisitions» prepared by the Molotov
Commission. These resolutions demand that the grain requisition quotas
be met by 1 January 1933 and that seed funds be created by 15 January
1933. It is prohibited to spend the natural funds created in kolkhozes
which have not settled with the State. The district executive
committees must immediately check these funds and appoint people in
cooperatives responsible for their preservation. The district executive
committees were given the right to count all natural funds of the
kolkhoz as part of the grain requisition quotas. And those kolkhoz
debtors who issued advances for people’s labour or for public food over
the established norm (15% of the actual amount threshed) had to
immediately organize the return of “unlawfully issued grain” in order to
direct it towards meeting the quota. The district executive committees
were instructed to organize the confiscation from kolkhozes, those not
part of a collective and workers of sovkhozes grain stolen when cutting,
threshing or transporting. In order to crush sabotage in the management
ranks, it was required that accountants, bookkeepers, storekeepers,
managers etc be held to answer if they concealed grain from the
inventory, on the basis of the resolution from 7 August 1932, as thieves
of State and public property.[46].
19.
In Item 9 of the Resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of
the Ukrainian SSR of 20 November it is stated that “With respect to
kolkhozes that have allowed the theft of kolkhoz grain and maliciously
sabotage the grain requisition quota, fines in kind are applied in the
form of an additional quota from the meat requisitions of the size of
the 15-month norm of the meat task for the given kolkhoz, both of the
common cattle, and that of the kolkhoz workers.[47].
The Party resolution duplicated this item, however added to it the
following: “In kolkhozes which do not satisfactorily meet the grain
requisition quota, with regard to kolkhoz workers who have grain sown on
their garden plots, all grain which they get from these garden plots as
natural issue for labour with the removal of the excess of grain handed
over to fulfil the grain requisition quota”[48].
The Party resolution included yet another item not in the government’s
resolutions: those farming not in a collective who did not meet their
grain quotas could be fined by the imposition of extra demands not only
from the meat requisitions of the 15 month norm, but also from potatoes
(the annual norm).[49].
20. Furthermore,
the resolution further pushed the idea that there was grain and that it
was communist saboteurs and former petlurites who were obstructing
implementation of the quota. “Since a number of agricultural party
organizations, especially during the period of cattle requisitions there
has proved to be unity between whole groups of communists and some
leaders of party branches with kulaks, petlurites, etc which in fact
turns such communists and party organizations into agents of the class
enemy and is clear proof of how far removed these branches and
communists are from the poor and middle-level kolkhoz masses, the
Central Committee and the Central Controlling Commission decrees that a
purge be carried out immediately of a number of village party
organizations which are clearly sabotaging the implementation of the
grant requisition quotas and are undermining fact in the Party among the
workers.”[50].
21.
On 21 November Molotov, Chubar, Stroganov and Kalmanovich addressed a
request to Stalin to provide the CC CPU, as represented by a special
commission (the General Secretary of the Central Committee, the Head of
the GPU of the UkrSSR, and a representative of the Central Controlling
Committee) for the duration of the grain requisitions with the right of
decision with regard to using the death penalty. The Special Committee
of the CC CPU needed only to report once every 10 days before the
Central Committee of the CPSU on its decisions in these cases.[51].
22.
Similar commissions at the regional (oblast) level, made up of the
First Secretary of the regional committee, the head of the regional
division of the GPU and the regional prosecutor were created in order to
accelerate the repressions in accordance with the Resolution of the CC
CPU from 5 December 1932. The courts had to consider cases within 4-5
days under the direct leadership and surveillance of the commission[52].
Analogous “troikas” and Special Commissions were created in regional
divisions of the GPU (Order of the GPU UkrSSR from 11 December 1932)[53].
Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine
23.
In order to force the peasants to give up their grain, the Party bosses
made examples of villages which for a long time could not settle with
the State, putting them on the so-called “black board”. This term was
first used in Kaganovich’s diary during his visit to Kuban. It entailed
closure of all State and cooperative shops with the confiscation of all
reserves, total ban on trading, kolkhoz or private, a purge of
counter-revolutionary and kulak elements and ban on leaving the village.[54].
The idea was supported in Ukraine and already on 6 December 1932 a
resolution of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and the
Council of People’s Commissars of the UkrSSR placed six villages on the
black board, while local authorities applied this against 400 villages.
24.
Despite the exceptional measures, the rate of grain requisitions fell.
As S. Kosior wrote to Stalin on 8 December 1932, the hay threshing had
ended almost everywhere, and therefore the Ukrainian Party organization
should be redirected “towards uncovering concealed, wrongly issued and
stolen grain”[55].
Grain could be taken from kolkhoz workers or independent farmers
either through searches or repression. Kosior considered the best means
to be repression in the form of “fines in kind” (“a kolkhoz worker and
even an independent farmer is now holding tight to a cow or pig”) or
depriving them of their garden plots[56].
25.
Displeased with the activities of the Ukrainian and Kuban leaders,
Stalin subjected them to severe criticism at a meeting of the Politburo
on 10 December 1932. On 14 December a secret resolution of the Central
Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and Sovnarkom “On grain
requisitions in Ukraine, North Caucuses and in the Western Region” was
passed. This changed the deadline for fulfilling the grain requisition
quota for Ukraine to the end of January, and in the North Caucasus
Territory to 10-15 January. The resolution again asserted that as the
result of the poor work of the Party leadership, former kulaks,
officers, petlurites, etc had penetrated the kolkozes and were trying to
organize “a counterrevolutionary movement and the sabotage of the harvest and sowing campaigns”. The
Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party and Sovnarkom issue
the order “to resolutely extirpate these counterrevolutionary elements
by means of arrests, long-term deportation to concentration camps,
without stopping short of capital punishment for the most malicious of
these elements”. The Resolution also stated that “the worst
enemies of the party, working class, and collective farm peasantry are
saboteurs of grain procurement who have party membership cards in their
pockets” and ordered that they apply “severe repressions, five- to
ten-year deportation to concentration camps, and, under certain
circumstances, execution by shooting”[57].
26. The Central Committee Resolution of 14 December 1932 sharply criticized the policy of Ukrainization. It asserted that it “was
carried out mechanically, without taking into consideration the
peculiarities of every raion and meticulous selection of the Bolshevik
cadre. This made it easier for bourgeois-nationalistic elements,
Petliurites and others to create their legal cover-ups and
counterrevolutionary cells and organizations”. The Central Committee
and Sovnarkom suggest “paying serious attention to the correct
implementation of Ukrainization, eliminating its mechanical
implementation, expelling Petliurite and other bourgeois-nationalistic
elements from Party and government organizations, meticulously selecting
and raising Ukrainian Bolshevik cadre, and ensuring systematic Party
management and supervision over Ukrainization”[58].
The Resolution basically contained the instruction to stop
Ukrainization in the North Caucasus Territory (more about this in Items
46, 47, and 48). And on 15 December 1932 a telegram signed by Stalin and
Molotov was sent to the Central Committees of the republic communist
parties; the territory and regional (oblast) committees, the heads of
the councils of people’s commissars of the territory and regional
committees. This contained yet another secret resolution which ordered
the immediate cessation of Ukrainization in al places with Ukrainians
living together throughout the entire territory of the USSR. As well as
the North Caucasus Territory (3,106 million Ukrainians), this included
such regions as the Kursk region (1.3 million), Voronezh region (1
million); the Far East, Siberia and Turkestan (with around 600 thousand
Ukrainians each).
27. No longer relying on Ukrainian
leaders, on 18 December 1932 Stalin sent Kaganovich and P. Postyshev to
Ukraine with special powers to use “all necessary measures of an
organizational and administrative nature for fulfilling the grain
requisition quota”. The Deputy Head of the OGPU of the USSR V. Balytsky
had been sent to Ukraine at the end of November 1932. On 20 December
1932 during a meeting of the Politburo of the CC CPU Balytsky stated
that from the beginning of December through blanket searches 7 thousand
pits and 100 concealed storing places had been uncovered, holding 700
thousand poods of grain.[59].
It followed from this that it was impossible to meet the quota in this
way. Nonetheless Kaganovich considered that it was necessary to uncover
“an underground grain city” in Ukraine. On 29 December he forced the CC
CPU to adopt a decision on confiscating all kolkhoz funds, including
seed funds. Chubar deemed the lack of fines in kind a failing of the
grain requisitions.[60].
28.
At the Politburo meeting, Balytsky reported that from the middle of
July to the middle of November 11 thousand people had been arrested on
“grain cases” and from 15 November to 15 December 1932 – 16 thousand
people, including 409 heads of kolkhozes and 107 heads of district
executive committees. The “troika” had issued 108 death sentences and a
further 100 cases were presently under examination.[61].
29. On 1 January 1933 the UkrSSR leadership received the following telegram signed by Stalin:
“Be
informed of the Central Committee Resolution from 1 January 1933:
“Suggest that the CPU and the Council of People’s Commissars of the
UkrSSR widely inform, via their village councils, kolkhozes, kolkhoz
workers and working individual farms that:
a) those of them who
voluntarily hand over to the State grain previously stolen and hidden
from inventory, shall not be repressed;
b) with regard to
kolkhoz workers, kolkhozes and individual farmers who stubbornly persist
in hiding grain previously stolen and hidden from inventory, the most
severe measures of punishment set out in the Resolution of the Central
Executive Committee and Sovnarkom of the USSR from 7 August 1932 “On the
protection of property of State enterprises, kolkhozes and
cooperatives, and the consolidation of socialist property” will be
applied.[62]
30. The
telegram notified the peasants that they must hand over all grain and
if they don’t do this, they faced blanket searches aimed at rooting out
“grain stolen and hidden from inventory”. If grain was found, punishment
would be according to the “5 ears of wheat law” (the death penalty or
no less than 10 years deprivation of liberty), and if none was found,
there would be a fine in kind, that is confiscation of meat, including
“in live” weight, and potatoes..
31. At the present time
many oral accounts from survivors have been gathered, and a lot
published. This testimony coincides with the historical facts. After
Stalin’s telegram the searches and confiscation of grain were merged
into a single campaign of repression. Brigades of activists were
organized who removed from the kolkhoz workers and independent farmers
not only grain, meat and potatoes, but all food that they found, even
cabbage, pickled beetroot, a handful of wheat – absolutely everything,
and if they found food cooked, they destroyed it. In this way they saved
themselves from starvation, since they got to keep a part of what they
found. The three volume work Oral History Project on the Ukrainian
Famine which fills 1,734 pages and published by the US Congress
Commission on the Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933 led by James Mace, is full
of such accounts from all regions of the country.
32. As
in 1932 the peasants tried to leave for other areas of the USSR in
search of food. Yet now the Soviet State organized a real blockade to
not let them leave Ukraine. On 22 January 1933 a directive was issued by
the Sovnarkom and the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party
on preventing the wide-scale exodus of starving peasants in Ukraine and
Kuban to find food. It was written by Stalin personally. On the very
next day an identical letter of instruction was issued by the CC CPU and
the Ukrainian Council of People’s Commissars, signed b Khataevych and
Chubar. It was to all regional party committees and regional executive
committees and spoke of the unacceptability of wide-scale moves by
kolkhoz workers and independent farmers beyond Ukraine.
«Following
last year’s example a mass exodus has begun from some raions of Ukraine
to the Moscow, Western regions, Central Chernozem [Black Earth] Region,
Byelorussia “for grain”. There have been cases where almost all
individual farmers and some of the kolkhoz workers have left their
village. Without a doubt some mass exoduses are being organized by
enemies of the Soviet regime, social revolutionaries [esery], and agents
of Poland in order to campaign “because of the peasants” in the
northern regions of the USSR against the kolkhozes and against the
Soviet regime. Last year the Party, Soviet and chekist bodies in Ukraine
failed to pay heed to this counter-revolutionary trick by enemies of
the Soviet regime. This year there must be no repeat of this mistake.
The CC CPU and the Council of People’s Commissars propose:
1.
that decisive measures are taken with no delay in each raion to prevent
the mass exodus of individual farmers and kolkhoz workers, on the basis
of the directive from Balytsky sent around through the GPU line.
2.
the work of all recruiters of labour for travel beyond Ukraine is
checked, that they are held under strict control, and that all
suspicious counter-revolutionary elements are dismissed from this work
and removed;
3. that widespread explanatory work is
undertaken among individual farmers and kolkhoz workers against wilfully
leaving and abandoning their households, and that they are warned that
if they leave for other regions they will be arrested there;.
4.
that measures are taken to stop the sale of tickets beyond Ukraine for
peasants who do not have permission to travel from the raion executive
committee or a document from industrial, construction or State
organizations confirming that they have been recruited for a particular
job outside Ukraine. The relevant instructions should be sent to the
People’s Commissariat of Communications and the transport sections of
the GPU;
5. that brief reports be provided no later than
6 p.m. on 24 January about the actual situation with mass exodus of
peasants for your oblast”[63]
33.
Special patrols and operations groups, as well as filter points, were
created at railway stations. Chekists [secret police], police officers
and local activists monitored the roads. According to figures from the
OGPU, during 50 days following the issuing of the directive 219.5
thousand peasants were stopped, this including 38 thousand in the
UkrSSR, 47 thousand in the North Caucasus Territory , in the Central
Chernozem Region – 44 thousand, in the Western Region – 5 thousand and
at railway stations – 65 thousand peasants. Of those detailed, 186.5
thousand were sent home under convoy, and almost 3 thousand had been
convicted, while the rest were awaiting trial or under investigation in
filtration camps.[64].
34.
Ukrainian peasants, tormented by the endless searches, confiscation of
food productions, and blockade were starving en masse. Those who
survived testify that beginning from February 1933 the famine became
particularly horrific. Whereas up till January tens of thousands were
dying, from February to May the numbers were in the millions. According
to a document from the GPU of the UkrSSR, during the entire period from 1
December 1932 to 25 January 1933 14,956 pits, 621 “black cellars” and
1,359 other hiding places were found, with 1,718.5 thousand poods of
grain confiscated.[65].
35.
On 5 February a resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party concluded the requisitions from the 1932 harvest. The
UkrSSR had in total fulfilled 83.5% of a quota which had twice been
reduced. A total of 4,171.4 thousand tonnes of grain had been
requisitioned against 7,047.1 thousand tonnes of grain from the 1931
harvest. Up to 1 November 136.1 million poods were handed over, and from
November through January 1933 – another 87 million poods of grain.
36.
At the end of January 1933 Postyshev was again sent to Ukraine to
prepare the spring sowing which against a background of mass starvation
and the lack of seeds was problematical. Back on 23 September, on
Stalin’s initiative, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party
and Sovnarkom passed a resolution according to which all proposals to
provide seed loans were rejected, and sovkhozes and kolkhozes were
warned that there would be no loan either for the winter crops or for
the spring sowing[66].
Therefore on 4 February Postyshev stated that seeds would be gathered
by means of grain requisitions. Since there was no grain among the
starving peasants, the party leaders resorted to rewards for
denunciations. Each person who informed where a neighbour was hiding
grain received between 10 and 15% of the grain discovered. On 17
February 1933 these “measures” were approved by a government resolution.[67].
37.
In February the Ukrainian leadership began providing aid to the
starving in order to safeguard the sowing. On 19 February 1933 Postyshev
received Stalin’s consent to unblock 3 million poods of State grain
reserves to provide food aid to the peasants. However the scale of the
famine was increasing by the day. Therefore Postyshev decided that it
wasn’t worth giving food to those not working. A CC CPU Resolution from
31 March 1933 on the preparations for the spring sowing contained the
following: “Suggest that the Kyiv regional committee carry out the following measures for organizing food aid to kolkhoz workers and independent farmers in need: b) divide all those hospitalized into the ill and those recovering, and considerably improve the food supplied to the latter so that they can be discharged and back to work as quickly as possible.”[68]. Thus, the peasants were divided into those who could provide labour and those weakened by hunger and unable to work. The first survived, the second died. This was the “charitable” State assistance.
38. Mortality in the first half of 1933 increased each month. And despite the fact that the work of the registrar offices was partly paralyzed, from March to August 1933 they registered hundreds of thousands of deaths.[69]. Overall for 1933 registrar offices registered 1,678 deaths in rural areas, 1,552 of these being Ukrainians. These statistics cannot give an idea of the scale of Holodomor as they are incomplete.[70]
38. Mortality in the first half of 1933 increased each month. And despite the fact that the work of the registrar offices was partly paralyzed, from March to August 1933 they registered hundreds of thousands of deaths.[69]. Overall for 1933 registrar offices registered 1,678 deaths in rural areas, 1,552 of these being Ukrainians. These statistics cannot give an idea of the scale of Holodomor as they are incomplete.[70]
39.
Against a background of mass starvation in the villages in 1933
Postyshev began an offensive against the Ukrainian intelligentsia and
Ukrainian Communist party. 1933 became a year of unabated political
repression. It was impossible to conceal a disaster on the scale of the
famine and the deaths of millions of people, and therefore the regime
tried to fend off possible accusations by diverting them against
“saboteurs”, in the first instance at agricultural specialists. In 1933
Stalin blamed agrarian professors of deliberately “injecting the cattle
in the kolkhozes and sovkhozes with plague or anthrax; of encouraging
the spread of meningitis among horses, and others”. In March 1933 a
panel board of the OGPU of the USSR examined the cases (“according to a
list”) of 75 civil servants of people’s commissariats for agriculture
and sovkhozes of Ukraine, Byelorussia and the North Caucasus Territory.
Less than a day was spent on example the case of the 75 officials. 35
were shot on the basis of the examination into the case. A real pogrom
was carried out in the Kharkiv agricultural and zootechnical institutes.
Scientific research institutes and universities in Ukraine lost up to
270 professors and lecturers.
40. At the beginning of 1933
the fabrication began of a “Ukrainian Military Organization” which they
“included” three writers in – Oles Dosvitniy, Serhiy Pylypenko and
Ostap Vyshnya. The first extrajudicial “terrorist” trial behind closed
doors in Ukraine took place in Kharkiv on 3 March 1934. Dosvitniy,
Pylypenko and Vyshnya were accused of planning the murder of Postyshev,
Chubar and Balytsky. Only Ostap Vyshnya was “pardoned”, receiving a
sentence of 10 years labour camp. The other nine people charged in the
“Ukrainian Military Organization” Case (still unfinished, in all 148
people were arrested) were shot. There were also trumped up cases over
the “Polish Military Organization” [POV] and the “Bloc of Ukrainian
Nationalist Parties”.
41. At the end of February 1933 a
campaign was launched against Mykola Skrypnyk and the communists
supporting him. Skrypnyk was removed from his post as Minister of
Education. Everything that was linked in Ukraine with the literary
renaissance, introduction of the literary language standards, creation
of new dictionaries, development of Ukrainian theatre, historical
research and Ukrainization of schools was all stigmatized as
“skrypnykovshchyna” [i.e. connected with Skrypnyk], became the target of
political repression which did not abate through 1933 and 1934. People
carrying out Ukrainization – from rural teachers to members of the
Academy of Sciences - were repressed on a wide scale as bourgeois
nationalists. On 13 May 1933 the well-known writer Mykola Khvylyovy
committed suicide. In June 1933 at the plenum of the CC CPU Postyshev
blamed Skrypnyk and his nationalist “deviation” for all the
“difficulties of the previous year”, and accused him of harbouring in
the People’s Commissariat of Education “deviationists, saboteurs,
counter-revolutionaries”.[71].
On 7 July 1934, unable to withstand the hounding, Skrypnyk killed
himself. His death spelled the end to Ukrainization and nationalism as a
whole (overall the CPU was halved, while the members of the Ukrainian
Politburo were later, during the Great Terror of 1937-1938 all
eliminated). Another leader of Ukrainization and People’s Commissar of
Education Oleksandr Shumsky was also arrested, together with communists
connected with him. On 5 September 1933 Shumsky was sentenced to 10
years imprisonment. In November 1933 the Director of the “Berezil”
Theatre Les Kurbas was arrested. In 1934 first-class writers who were
later to become known as “rozstrilyane vidrodzhennya” [“Executed
Renaissance”] were repressed, being labelled as “bourgeois nationalists”
and “terrorists”. In total the OGPU arrested 199 thousand people in
Ukraine in 1932-1933, against 119 thousand in 1929-1931, and 71 thousand
in 1934-1936. Death from starvation coincided with repression of the
national Ukrainian cultural, intellectual, creative and political elite.
Holodomor 1932-1933 in Kuban
42. Just
as Ukraine received the most onerous grain requisition quota among
agricultural regions in 1931-1932, so to were the planned figures for
grain requisitions in Kuban for 1931-1932 higher than for the other 10
districts of the North Caucasus Territory. It was for this reason that
the rural population of Kuban, together with Ukraine, had the worst
results for grain requisition quotas and became the target of efforts by
the Party-State leadership of the USSR aimed at extracting grain. As
stated in the decision of the Soviet Politburo from 1 November 1932 with
regard to the commission headed by Kaganovich: “the main task of the
said group of comrades is to devise and carry out measures aimed at
breaking down sabotage of the sowing and grain requisition, organized by
counter-revolutionary kulak elements in Kuban.”[72].
43.
The Kaganovich Commission immediately began punitive measures. A
resolution of the politburo of the North Caucasus Territory Communist
Party from 4 November 1932 added three stanitsas to the “black board”
and the population was warned that if it continued to sabotage the
sowing and grain requisitions, they would all be exiled North, and the
stanitsas would be taken over by diligent kolkhoz workers who work in
conditions where there is little arable land or on uncomfortable land in
other areas. The resolution also contained measures analogous to the
measures in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party from 18 November 1932: intensifying the struggle against
saboteurs, especially those with Party tickets in their pocket, the
confiscation of grain previously distributed in payment for labour and
the introduction of fines in kind.
44. Kaganovich’s threat
was carried out, and from four large stanitsas – Poltavska,
Medvedovska, Urupska and Umanska – 51.8 thousand people were exiled to
the North of the country. and from other stanitsas – no less than 10
thousand. All of their property and livestock was left for those
“diligent kolkhoz workers” who would settle in these stanitsas. In fact,
the inhabitants of those stanitsas, already emaciated, were deported to
a sure death.
45. Those who refused to rob the peasants
and Cossacks themselves ended up within the machine of repression. Even
before the arrival of the Kaganovich Commission, the OGPU had arrested 5
thousand communists of Kuban, and overall around the territory – 15
thousand. On 4 November 1932 another decision was adopted by the North
Caucasus Territory Committee, this being to carry out a purge of the
Party organizations of the Territory, and first and foremost, Kuban.
Throughout November and December 1932 and in 1933, approximately 40
thousand people were expelled from the Party, while up to 30 thousand
other members of the Party fled beyond the Territory.[73].
46.
The people of Kuban faced the same fate as the Ukrainian peasants –
blanket searches, confiscation of food, and after 22 January 1933 – a
blockade with it being impossible to leave in search of food. Earlier,
however, discrimination had been added on ethnic grounds. Item 7 of the
Resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party “On
grain requisitions in Ukraine, North Caucuses and in the Western Region”
from 14 December 1932 stated that “the irresponsible, non-Bolshevik
“Ukrainization,” which was at variance with the cultural interests of
the population and which affected nearly half of the raions in the
Northern Caucasus, as well as the complete lack of supervision on the
part of territorial agencies over the Ukrainization of schools and the
press, had provided the enemies of the Soviet power with a legal form
for organizing resistance to the Soviet authorities’ measures and tasks
on the part of kulaks, officers, Cossack resettlers, members of the
Kuban Rada, etc.»[74].
47.
“For the purpose of crushing the resistance to grain requisitions
mounted by kulak elements and their party and non-party menials”, the
Central Committee and Sovnarkom among other things, issued orders to: “immediately
switch Soviet bodies, cooperative societies, and all newspapers and
magazines in the Ukrainized raions of the Northern Caucasus from
Ukrainian to Russian, as being more understandable to Kuban residents,
and to prepare and change the language of instruction in schools to
Russian by the autumn. The Central Committee and Sovnarkom oblige the
Territory Party and Executive Committees to urgently examine and improve
the composition of school teachers in the Ukrainized raions”[75].
48.
This resulted in the destruction of all ethno-cultural forms of life
led by Ukrainians in the Northern Caucuses, the closing of Ukrainian
schools, newspapers, journals, other Ukrainian cultural structures.
Added to the physical suffering from starvation in Kuban, was the
psychological suffering caused by the denigration of the honour and
dignify of the inhabitants of Kuban – ethnic Ukrainians who made up more
than two thirds of the population of Kuban.
[1] Here and later references are to the numbers of the items in Appendix “Brief description of the historical facts 1930-1933”
[2] S.V. Kulchytsky: Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide: difficulties of understanding. – p. 183.
[3] Commander of the great famine – p.209.
[4] Ibid . – p. 214.
[5] William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law. The Crime of Crimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), “Chapter 3. Groups protected by the Convention». (Quoted in Serbin, The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 and the UN Convention on Genocide, p.5).
[6] Id. at 10 (emphasis added).
[7] Prosecutor v.Goran Jelisic, ICTY (Trial Chamber I), Case No. IT-95-10 “Breko», Judgement of 14 December 1999.
[8] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – pp. 396-415.
[9] Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro); Summary of the Judgment of 26 February 2007, p.9.
[10] http://ukrsvit.kiev.ua/us/gazeta/statii.html.vatra2
[11] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – pp. 287-288.
[12] James Mace. Political causes of Holodomor in Ukraine (1932-1933). Ukrainian Historical Journal, No. 1, 1995: Posted in Ukrainian at: maidan.org.ua
[13] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – p. 264-265.
[14] S.V. Kulchytsky. Destruction for rescue // Krytyka, No. 3, 2008 – pp. 15-17
[15] Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro); Summary of the Judgment of 26 February 2007, p. 9.
[16] Andrea Graziosi: Soviet famine and Ukrainian Holodomor. Available in Russian at: www.strana-oz.ru
[17] Y. Shapoval and V. Zolotahyov: Vsevolod Balytsky: the person, his time and surroundings – K. 2002, p. 189.
[18] Famine-genocide 1932-1933 in Ukraine – p. 297.
[19] “Proletarian Pravda” from 22 January 2008 (quoted from the publication: “Mass-scale famine as social genocide”. http:/news.bbc.co.uk/hi/Russian/international/newsid_6161000/6161035.stm)
[20] “It would be unwise if the communists, working on the premise that the kolkozes are a socialist form of management, did not respond to the blow inflicted by these particular kolkhoz workers or kolkhozes with a devastating blow” (Stalin, 27 December 1932).
[21] Serhiy Makhun. War on the “literary front”. // Dzerkalo tyzhnya [“Weekly Mirror”] No. 45, 24-30 November 2007
[22] Cited in the work by Andriy Portnov. The concepts of genocide and ethnic cleansing: western scholarly discussions // Ukraina moderna, part 2 (13), 2008 – p. 99
[23] Cited in the work by Andriy Portnov. The theory of genocide before the challenge of Holodomor” // Krytyka, No. 5, 2008 – pp. 11-13.
[24] Raphael Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation - Analysis of Government - Proposals for Redress, (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79 - 95. www.preventgenocide.org
[25] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: causes and consequences – p. 394.
[26] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide: difficulties in understanding – Kyiv: Nash chas 2008 – p. 186.
[27] The Tragedy of the Soviet Village – v. 3, p. 227.
[28] The Tragedy of the Soviet Village – v. 3, pp. 239-240.
[29] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – p. 195.
[30] The Tragedy of the Soviet Village... – v. 3 – p. 420.
[31] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide.. – p. 200.
[32] The Tragedy of the Soviet Village... – v. 3 – pp. 362-363, 365.
[33] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 206.
[34] Ibid. – p. 213.
[35] Ibid. – p. 205.
[36] Ibid. – p. 206.
[37] “Pravda”, 14 July 1932
[38] Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence, 1931-1936. – p. 205.
[39] S.V. Kulchytsky. The Price of the “Great Turn”. – p. 212.
[40] Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence, 1931-1936. – pp.. 241-242.
[41] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide.. – p.. 399..
[42] S.V. Kulchytsky. 1933: The Tragedy of the Famine – K.: 1989. – p. 32.
[43] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 356.
[44] The Tragedy of the Soviet Village... – v. 3 – pp.528-529.
[45]The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – pp.371-372.
[46] Collectivization and famine in Ukraine. 1929-1933. – pp.548-549.
[47] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 400.
[48] Ibid . – p.391.
[49] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 393.
[50] Ibid. – pp.393-393.
[51] The Tragedy of the Soviet Village... – v. 3 – p.548.
[52] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 443.
[53] Ibid. – p.472.
[54] The Commander of the Great Famine. – p.260.
[55] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: through the eyes of historians, in the language of the documents – p.282.
[56] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: through the eyes of historians, in the language of the documents. – pp. 284, 286.
[57] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 476.
[58] Ibid. – p. 477.
[59] The Commander of the Great Famine. – p.316.
[60] Ibid. – p.317.
[61] Ibid. – p.316.
[62] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 569.
[63] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 617.
[64] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – p. 310.
[65] Ibid. – p. 299.
[66] S.V. Kulchytsky. 1933: the tragedy of the Famine, p. 41.
[67] Ibid.
[68] The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 802.
[69] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – p. 340.
[70] S.V. Kulchytsky. Why did he destroy us? – p. 154.
[71] James Mace. Political causes of Holodomor in Ukraine (1932-1933). Ukrainian Historical Journal, No. 1, 1995 Posted in Ukrainian at: maidan.org.ua
[72] The Commander of the Great Famine. – p. 250.
[73] S.V. Kulchytsky. Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide... – p. 293.
[74]The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Documents and Materials. – p. 476.
[75] Ibid – p. 477.
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